Bad Times at the El Royale

Welcome to a hotel that may remind you of that one in The Shining.

Jon Hamm

Criticising
this film is easy enough so it may be that my rating is on the high
side, but the fact is that I enjoyed the movie and did so for the whole
of its 141 minutes. My pleasure stemmed from many factors not the least
of which was discovering that its writer/director Drew Goddard has a
great sense of cinema (not being a fan of horror movies of any kind, I
did not see the piece that made his name, 2012’s The Cabin in the Woods). Bad Times at the El Royale
(in itself an engaging title) begins with a prologue which in its
timing and effect immediately demonstrates Goddard’s mastery. In
addition by incorporating jump cuts into an interior scene covering a
short period of time the film invites us not to expect a narrative
which will be a piece of naturalistic realism but instead to relish
something much more fanciful.

This
opening segment that will fall into place later in the tale is followed
by events that take place ten years later. Save for a few brief
flashbacks, this main narrative is set in a single location, the
run-down El Royale hotel near Lake Tahoe, where, this being out of
season, just a handful of guests are seen. They arrive for different
reasons but what could be thought of as their interlocking tales share
menace and mystery together with the revelation that not all of these
visitors are the people they claim to be. We meet first Father Daniel
Flynn (Jeff Bridges) and Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo), a singer due to
perform in nearby Reno, and another early arrival is a salesman named
Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm). Later they are joined by others
(Dakota Johnson, Cailee Spaeny, Chris Hemsworth) while the hotel staff
is comprised solely of Miles (Lewis Pullman) whose warning to Father
Flynn that the El Royale is no place for a priest to stay proves well
founded.

Bad Times at the El Royale
is an entertainment with fine production values, a period setting
(1969) that allows for a soundtrack featuring songs of that era and a
relish for cinema that is at times Hitchcockian. It also delights in
dividing up the narrative into titled sections thus enabling some play
to be made with the time scale (an unexpected murder is reprised so
that we see it three times). The editing adds moments of
shock value and the cast is uniformly top whole (relative newcomers do
as well as the established names with special credit going to Bridges,
Erivo and Pullman while fans of Hemsworth will be suitably taken aback).

The
plotting is in its way very clever even if at times it is only a step
away from being absurd enough to be risible. However, the oddest
feature of Bad Times at the El Royale
lies in the fact that this improbable drama with its appeal to film
buffs gives signs of becoming a serious religious drama taking on
redemption as its theme. It’s a transition that Goddard cannot really
bring off (that’s why serious criticism can validly rip this film
apart). Even so, with this cast it doesn’t seem like a ludicrous
misstep. It provides a destination that surprises but, as a mystery
tour that could lead you anywhere, Bad Times at the El Royale provides an offbeat and engaging evening out.